Thursday, October 28, 2010

Failsafe

So as I pointed out on Saturday when I was the only reporter to show up at the Amherst Police Station turned War Room to observe the coordination of officials from various fiefdoms handling what could have been a major health alert, Princess Stephanie reaffirmed on Monday night that indeed public officials were on edge. As well they should have been.

Twice now in the past 13 months--both events at most inopportune times--the town has undergone this public health scare. If I were a terrorist trying to maximize damage from sabotaging the public water supply in Amherst, I would probably choose Labor Day weekend when the students return in waves (last year) or the first ever Phish concert at the Mullins Center (this year) which brought an extra 20,000 people to the town.

Unfortunately the Town Manager reported to the Select Board that we may "never know" the cause of the false coliform and E. coli positives (but then, how do we know they were false?)The Springfield Republican reports

7 comments:

If you have a whole bunch of rain, you have a whole bunch of runoff and when you draw on surface water sources, the runoff contaminates your source.

The solution, of course, is to open up all the hydrants and flush the daylights out of your system. And this includes UMass except that means you have to stop charging UM for the water they will flush (on your behalf) if you want them to do it.

Yes, the heavy rain brings downstream all those contaminated stagnant pools of bacteria-laden water that were festering during the parched summer. And, so you know, Phish played the Mullins Center in 1994 and 1995.